Along the Dotted Lines
by phollie
Summary: Merrily we fall out of line. / Ozbert, young and old. For Ryoura.


****This one is dedicated to my PH fandom friend, Ryoura, whom some of you may know on Youtube and Tumblr. She's an excellent editor and all-around great person, and one of the first people in this fandom that I really admired. Cheers~

Lyrics are "I Wouldn't Mind" by He Is We.

* * *

**.along the dotted lines**

/

_merrily we fall out of line, out of line_

_i'd fall anywhere with you; i'm by your side_

/

During their first picnic on the clearest spring day, Gilbert chokes on a strawberry. In the midst of hacking and wheezing and reaching for Oz's sleeve, he mentally vows that he'll never eat one again for as long as he lives; that is, if this doesn't kill him, since he surely feels like he may very well keel over and die at his master's feet – but that's a terrifying thought quickly put to rest when Oz thumps him hard on the back, hard enough to dislodge the hellish fruit so that Gilbert can finally breathe. He's shaking and dizzy from the panic, given that he's perhaps the most frantic thirteen-year-old known to man, but Oz is laughing and rubbing his shoulder, telling him how red his face is and how silly he looks, doubled over and clutching his chest like that.

If Gilbert could thank him for saving his measly life, he would, but, well, he still can't exactly breathe all that nicely, so that sentiment will have to wait.

"Did Gil just die for a moment?" Ada asks, her bright eyes wide with some morbid sort of curiosity mingled with concern. She's a dark sort of child when she wants to be, Gilbert thinks, but no less charming. Just like her brother.

Oz gives a summery sort of laugh, the kind of laugh that has been making Gilbert's hands turn clammy as of late, and pats his sister's blond head. He's still rubbing Gilbert's shoulder. It feels very, very nice. "No, Ada, Gil didn't die. He could have, though, if I hadn't saved him!"

In his mind, Gilbert is intensively working on that passionate, extensive thank-you, but he still doesn't have the proper breath to form it. All he can do is sit on his little square of the picnic blanket and wait for his heart to stop pounding in his throat, shivering a bit at the feel of Oz's hand easing the tension out of his upper back. Choking is quite the upsetting ordeal, and possibly one of Gilbert's _least_ favorite things in this world – right after cats, he figures, and right before green peppers, since at least peppers don't _kill _you – but Oz's shoulder-rubbing rather makes up for it, so he can't say he's too traumatized from the affair.

A warm breeze blows through Oz's hair; well, naturally it blows through Ada's and Gilbert's hair as well, but Gilbert is really only focused on Oz at the moment, admiring how golden the sunlight washes him, how lovely and smooth his skin looks. Someday, if Oz would let him, Gilbert thinks he would very much like to touch him, to feel how soft his skin must be, or something silly and absurd and wonderful like that.

For the rest of the picnic, Gilbert avoids the strawberries, letting Oz and Ada have every last one. His throat still feels tight, and every now and then he lets out a pathetic little cough or a hiccup, but Oz still rubs mindlessly just between his shoulder blades as he nibbles on fruit and sips tea and tells Ada some wild story from the second volume of Holy Knight. Gilbert may or may not fake a few coughs in the meantime, just to keep Oz touching him.

When Gilbert finally gets around to thanking him, it's nearly bedtime, and Oz is smiling sleepily at him from his bed, looking like some dreamy figure from a watercolor painting. A cool wind blows through the open window and rustles at the sheets covering his bare legs. Gilbert can't stop looking at the space where the sheets rest atop Oz's thighs, even as he clears his throat and says, "Thank you for, um…keeping me from dying. From the strawberry."

He's acutely aware of just how stupid he sounds right now, and his face flushes hot when Oz laughs and beckons him inside with a wave of his hand. Gilbert obeys wordlessly, eagerly. "Well, I wasn't just going to let you keep choking, right? What kind of friend would that make me?"

Gilbert rolls that word around on his tongue until his mouth feels dry. Friend, friend, friend. Do friends wish to touch each other's skin the way that Gilbert wants to? Is that some sort of prerequisite? He can't be entirely sure. All he knows is that it makes him nervous, the way his stomach flips when Oz tugs him into his bed and pulls the sheet over the both of them, his breath warm and sugary when he laughs and lightly pinches Gilbert's cheek. "Why are you blushing?"

"I-I'm certainly not – "

"You are, you are." Oz's voice is hushed and excited; it's doing nothing for Gilbert's nerves besides heightening them, until he's squirming and averting his eyes and feeling anxious for entirely new reasons that don't involve choking on strawberries during picnics.

And Oz's voice is every sweet, dangerous thing when he leans in, smirking, and says, "It looks like Gil wants to kiss me. Am I right?"

Gilbert nearly falls out of the bed, what with how his entire body seems to seize up in his embarrassment, shrinking away from Oz on a rapid recoil. Oz, of course, is right. Oz is always right, yes, but this time he's so incredibly right that Gilbert is almost frightened by it, alarmed at how easily he can be read within seconds.

"Relax, Gil, I was just kidding." Oz laughs again, breezy and light, and snuggles down into the pillow, closing his eyes. He looks, for lack of a better word, pretty. Gilbert thinks he just looks very _pretty, _like how Oz sees girls, but how Gilbert sees Oz. He wonders if that's a bad thing. Perhaps. Probably. Definitely.

Oz is the first to fall asleep after a while of mindless murmuring and inane conversation that never fail to fall upon best friends late at night. Gilbert counts the other's wispy eyelashes to keep himself awake, not wanting to drift off to sleep and leave Oz vulnerable to the shadows of the night; but slumber steals him away soon after, and he curls himself around Oz's warm body like a shield despite being slighter and weaker than the other. But it doesn't matter, Gilbert thinks right before slipping under – he would fight every scrap of darkness to keep Oz in the light.

No shadow permeates the body that is all but made of them. All the while, Oz's remains shrouded in moonlight.

/

Eleven years later, they don't have picnics anymore, but they do have ice-frosted windows and a spitting fireplace and a quiet sort of tension that comes with the realization of ten years having stretched between their bodies. Gilbert is tall and wiry but broad in all the places he once was slight; Oz remains thin as a whip, frozen in time but no less beautiful. He hasn't changed.

Gilbert has.

He smokes now. He drinks now. He broods and slouches and barely sleeps. He traded out the soft blue and white of childhood and replaced it with black, endless black like the very Chain he harbors deep within him. He has killed and nearly been killed. He's a Nightray and one breath short of a monster.

And yet, for whatever reason, Oz insists Gilbert is everything but. He's so earnest, so confident in his declarations, and Gilbert is thrown each and every time he's told _you really haven't changed at all, have you, Gil._

It's strange and it's wonderful and it hurts in a way that Gilbert can't quite place. And on this cold morning, this is the riddle that he's stuck on as he sits upright in bed, legs stretched out like skinny willows under the blankets. The only reason he's smoking this early in the morning, or perhaps the only reason he smokes at all, is to keep his nerves under some semblance of control. Oz is curled up sweetly beside him, and he murmurs the inane language of dreams as he sleeps. It's endearing. In fact, it's more than that – it's the feeling of the center of Gilbert's universe being tucked safely right next to him, breathing, heart beating, no longer a distant and lost thing that Gilbert spent a seemingly endless decade trying to reach. It's uncanny, really, the fact that he could just move his arm a few inches to the left and he'd be grazing Oz's shoulder, when just mere months ago, he was pining after what could have only been compared to a ghost.

But Oz is no ghost. Oz is alive, and he's beautiful, and Gilbert loves him, plain and simple and yet so very complex. That much, at the very least, could never change.

Lost in thought, Gilbert takes a too-long drag of his cigarette and is suddenly stricken with the feeling of his throat closing up. His chest burns and tightens, desperate for air, and he's sent into a violent coughing fit that wakes Oz up in no time. As Oz blinks the sleep out of his eyes and sits up to rub at Gilbert's shaking shoulder, he's reminded of a time long ago when they sat on a blanket in the grass on the clearest day of spring. There had been strawberries, and sunlight, and Oz's hand on his shoulder rubbing the tension out of him just as he is now. He's murmuring something soothing, all the while half-laughing, and Gilbert eventually feels the coughing fit subside into a teary-eyed, sore-throated afterglow of both parts embarrassment and relief. He's shaking like a leaf and breathing heavily, just as he had back then, and Oz is snuggling up next to him and breathing out sleepy laughter into his arm. "Here, give it to me," he says, reaching for the cigarette stub still weakly tucked between Gilbert's fingers. Gilbert abides and watches as Oz stamps it out into one of the numerous ashtrays by the bedside. "There. All better."

Breath still hitching in little gasps, Gilbert rubs at his sore throat and gives one last pathetic cough. He's already thinking of the million ways he could possibly thank him, but he still lacks the breath to get his words out. Oz seems to understand, judging by the knowing smile that's pulling at the corner of his pretty mouth. "Like I said before," he muses quietly, "you really haven't changed at all."

Gilbert has half the mind to protest, but the feel of Oz's body pressed up against his side is making it difficult to string together a proper thought outside of how warm he is, how soft he is, how the golden sunlight makes him look almost inhuman, angelic. Gilbert can only gaze at him and think directly back to that night all those years ago, when Oz held his hand under the sheets and fell asleep with him, webbed in the silver of the moon. Eager to keep him in the light, Gilbert drank in all the shadows and took them onto himself, but even now, it looks as though they still haven't left him.

Oz's smile turns thoughtful for a moment, then mischievous, his eyes lidding and lips curling. There's an inside-joke in his eyes, one that speaks of _remember this? Remember when?_ "It looks like Gil wants to kiss me. Am I right?"

And Gilbert, like an absolute fool, blurts out, "Yes."

Oz's smile falters. For one horrid second, Gilbert wonders if he's just ruined absolutely everything, if Oz will bolt and run and he'll never see him again. A hot rush of anxiety pierces through him and makes him tremble for entirely new reasons now, and right when he feels his face flushing with heat, Oz says, "Stop trying to make me nervous. It won't work."

But even as he says this, Gilbert can hear Oz's voice waver at the tail end of his words, can see how his brow furrows and how his gaze falters for one timorous moment. He's trying to so hard to appear as some unshakable thing that can't be touched or tapped into, but Gilbert, for all the years he's known him, catches onto the act in a second. "I'm – " His own voice comes out foolishly high, and he clears his throat, looking off to the left. "I'm not."

"Yes, Gil, you are. You…you were supposed to get all flustered and deny it, and then I was supposed to laugh at you and tease you and…"

Gilbert suddenly wishes to high hell that he had that cigarette back. "Is it…really that unbelievable?"

"Yes."

The smallness of that word paired with the inexplicable meekness of Oz's voice has Gilbert turning to look back at him, brows raised, lips pursed. Oz just barely parts his mouth, and it's such a tiny movement that Gilbert may very well have imagined it. The tension is back, hovering above their heads like some invisible storm cloud, and Gilbert can't help but feel very foolish sitting here in bed, his throat still aching from his coughing fit, waiting for Oz to say or do something that will put them both back in their rightful places.

After a long pause, Oz drops his gaze to his lap and asks, "Would you have done it? Back then, when I first asked you…"

And the memory plays out so clearly in Gilbert's mind, the memory of awkward adolescence and rumpled bedsheets and the open window letting in the night breeze and Oz's whispery voice. It's strange how it feels so recent, and yet so distant all at once, as if it were a scene he'd read in a book rather than having experienced for himself. Then again, he thinks as he glances down at Oz's lips, it's as if Oz himself has been a character out of a book all this time, something whimsical and untouchable that Gilbert lives to drink in word for word. At the thought, Gilbert admits a baleful smile and says, "You wouldn't believe me if I said anything other than 'no', right…?"

Oz's expression takes a turn for the contemplative as he looks up at Gilbert with searching eyes. "I might."

A tentative silence bridges between the two of them. Gilbert's heart is beating hard in his throat as Oz stares at him with eyes that make him look so much older, their mischief replaced with some unreadable look that Gilbert wishes he could figure out; but his mind is too scrambled for that, and the moment only lasts another breath before Oz blinks back to his normal self – his pseudo-normal self, that is – and lets out an airy little laugh, flicking his bangs out of his eyes. "Well, it's too nice of a day to be so serious, don't you think? Let's save this talk for a rainy day."

And with that, Gilbert watches dazedly as Oz hops out of bed and stretches his arms high above his head, groaning with relief. His nightshirt lifts up and shows a glance of his bare stomach. Oz looks at Gilbert out the corner of his eye, still stretching. "Isn't it supposed to rain tomorrow? Tomorrow or the day after, one of those."

Gilbert catches sight of Oz's fingers shaking as they spread above his head, palms facing the ceiling. The boy's delicate spine pops, and he sighs contentedly, although the breathy sound is touched with a tremor. Oz hides it with a clearing of his throat, and Gilbert rests his head back on the pillow, smiling to himself. The morning sun paints Oz entirely golden.


End file.
